Reviewer Wally Wood:
Wally is an editor and writer, has published three
novels, Getting Oriented:A Novel about Japan, The
Girl in the Photo an Death in a Family Business.
He obtained his MA in creative writing in 2002 from the City
University of New York and has worked with a number of authors
as a ghostwriter and collaborator.

With an extensive background in a
variety of business subjects, his credits include twenty-one
nonfiction books. He spent twenty-five years as a trade magazine
reporter and editor and has been a volunteer writing and business
teacher in state and federal prisons for more than twenty years.
He has finished his fourth novel and has translated a collection of
Japanese short stories into English.

By Wally Wood

Published on March 22, 2018

Author: Emily Ruskovich

Publisher: Random House

ISBN: 978-0-399-59121-1

Author: Emily Ruskovich

Publisher: Random House

ISBN: 978-0-399-59121-1

A friend of mine told me
that Emily Ruskovich's first novel, Idaho, was the best book she'd
read in a year. Because my friend reads widely and is a writer
herself, I took that as high praise and read the book

I'm not sure Idaho is the
best book I've read in a year (I'm still recovering from Rachel
Cusk's Transit), but it is powerful and deserves to be read widely by
thoughtful readers. And while I don't usually do this—I don't look
at other reviews before I write my own—in this case I'm making an
exception because the first one-start review on Amazon today is a
good place to start this commentary.

The woman writes: "Dark,
depressing, hopeless, grim, jumps from person to person without
character development, long passages that you get lost in, no closure
on anything. Impossible for me to see anything redeeming about this
book." Consider yourself warned.

She is correct; Idaho is
not a happy book. One main character, Ann, is married to Wade who has
terminal Alzheimer's and the disease causes him to do—allows him
the freedom to do—abusive acts.

Wade's first wife, Jenny,
is serving a life sentence in prison for killing 12-year-old May,
their younger daughter. The day of the murder, 16-year-olds June,
their older daughter disappeared.

So we have an inexplicable
death . . . a man who has lost two children and his wife and is
now losing his memories . . . a woman who does not understand
her act on a sunny summer afternoon when the family was gathering
firewood for the winter . . . Jenny's cellmate who is damaged in her
own way . . . and Ann, twenty years younger than Wade, someone who
was born in Idaho but who grew up in England, a singer and music
teacher, someone who falls in love with Wade and tells him:

"I
could take care you you," she said softly. She was very
surprised to hear herself say this, but even so her voice was caml,
as if she had been intending to say it all along. Bur really it was
the only time that such a thing had occurred to her and the words
escaped her to quietly that she wondered at first if he had even
heard. As she waited to find out, dozens of blackbirds, startled at
nothing, rose off the telephone wire at once. Ann and Wade watched
them converge and scatter like a handful of black sand thrown against
the sky.

After
a long time he said, "It wouldn't be right."

The Amazon critic is also
correct that the narrative moves from character to character, but few
readers will have trouble knowing whose point of view we're following
at the moment. I don't understand or agree with her complaint that
there is no character development. By the end of novel everyone has
changed, although, to be fair, not every question has been answered
or loose end tied off (a compliment).

Some readers complain
about that the chronology is confusing. Ruskovich numbers the
chapters by the year in which the main action takes place (there are
also flashbacks within chapters): 2004, 2008, 1985-1986, 1995, 2006,
1999, 1971, 1995, 2007, 1995, 2008-2009, 2009, 1973, 2010-2011, 2009,
2012, 2012-2024, 1995, 2024, May 2025, 1995, July 2025, 1995, August
2025. In other words, the novel's story stretches from 1973 to August
2025. It strikes me as gutsy to play with time the way Ruskovich does
(I can imagine an editor complaining, "Why can't you just tell a
straightforward story?") and a tour de force to advance the
action into 2025.

This is Ruskovich's first
novel; her short stories have appeared in literary magazines and she
was a 2015 O. Henry Award winner. She grew up in the mountains of
northern Idaho so when she writes about the landscape, the small
towns, the brutal winters, and the black flies of summer she's
writing from the inside. I have only one nit to pick: In the prisons
in which I've taught, the prisoners call solitary "Going into
the shoo"—the SHU, segregated housing unit—not Lock. But
maybe "Lock" is the term they would use in the fictional
Sage Hill Women's Correctional Center.

I would not say Idaho is
the best book I've read all year. I will say it is one of the best
books I've read all year. Sophisticated readers who want a rewarding
and moving experience will enjoy it.